Defunct Idaho railroads: Great Northern Railway, Northern Pacific Railway, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad, Burlington Northern Railroad, List of Idaho railroads, Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 24. Chapters: Great Northern Railway, Northern Pacific Railway, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, Gilmore and Pittsburgh Railroad, Burlington Northern Railroad, List of Idaho railroads, Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company, Utah and Northern Railway, Oregon Short Line Railroad, Spokane International Railroad, Oregon, Washington and Idaho Railroad, Camas Prairie Railroad, Lake Creek and Coeur d'Alene Railroad, Idaho Northern Railroad. Excerpt: The Northern Pacific Railway (reporting mark NP) was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in central Montana on Sept. 8, 1883. The railroad served a large area, including extensive trackage in the states of Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. In addition the company had international lines to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and southeastern British Columbia, Canada. The company was headquartered first in Brainerd, Minnesota, then in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1970 it merged with other lines to form the Burlington Northern Railroad. Map of NPR Land Grant, c1890The Northern Pacific Railway Company was chartered by Congress on July 2, 1864; it was formed with the goal of connecting the Great Lakes with Puget Sound on the Pacific, opening vast new lands for farming, ranching, lumbering and mining, and linking Washington and Oregon to the rest of the country. It was granted some 47 million acres (190,000 km²) of land in exchange for building rail transportation to an undeveloped territory. Josiah Perham (for whom Perham, Minnesota, is named) was elected its first president on December 7, 1864. For the next six years, backers of the road struggled to find financing. Though John Gregory Smith succeeded Perham as president on January 5, 1866, groundbreaking did not take place until February 15, 1870, at Thompson Junction, Minnesota, 25 miles (40 km) west of Duluth, Minnesota. The backing and promotions of famed Civil War financier Jay Cooke in the summer of 1870 brought the first real momentum to the company. Over the course of 1870, the Northern Pacific pushed westward from Minnesota into present-day North Dakota. It also began reaching from Kalama, Washington Territory, on the Columbia River outside of Portland, Oregon, towards Pu